Taiwan Delights - Part 2

August 2011 - Taiwan


So, last week I talked about my time in Taipei and my obsession with a particular CD store. This week I'll go further into my trip and talk about my time in the south of Taiwan.

After a few more days in Taipei, we took the THSR (Taiwan's version of the bullet train) down to Tainan - Taiwan's second city. 

It didn't take long at all to arrive at our destination but it did take a while to get into our hostel.

Upon finding the hostel it didn't seem like anyone was home. There was however, a note on the door with the owner's name (Bryant) and two telephone numbers on it.

Now here's where it gets tricky, we had a hard time trying to contact Bryant for a long while because we couldn't read one of the numbers on the note. I don't have a photo of it unfortunately but I'm going to draw it using paintbrush so that you can see.

Any ideas? We still don't know what it is! It kind of looks like an alternate reality 9 but there were some normal shaped nines already on the note.

Luckily one of the phone numbers didn't have this wacky number so we were able to get in touch with him eventually and he sent his father whizzing down the road on a tiny scooter to open the door for us.

The hostel used to be their family home and was incredibly narrow but had a really nice atmosphere to it. 

Inside we met an Italian guy who looked like Sideshow Bob, a boisterous Japanese girl, and a Korean guy who could have been easily mistaken for a puppy and it took nearly over a week for us to discover that he couldn't really understand English (his use of "ums and ahs" were first class). We only spent one night in Tainan, the next day we went through Kaoshiung down to the bottom tip of Taiwan to the surfer capital of Kenting.

Kenting is a bit of a tourist paradise and with that, comes a lot of full hostels and not many places to stay. Whilst in Tainan we did some frantic searching for any hostels with availability and could only find one in a good location - The Awu Hostel. Unfortunately, the hostel description page was only in Chinese but we could still reserve beds.

The options weren't very promising. "4 bed private suite, 6 bed private suite" but one did manage to grab our attention.

"1 bed mixed dorm"

I'll admit we were confused. Even more so when the scroll down menu for number of people in this bed went up to 6.

We then had a look at the reviews page for the Awu.

Here is a direct review from the page itself:

“If you stay here, I recommend travelling in a group of 3 (or 6)
because the beds are one large bunk for 3 people. It would be strange to sleep next to a stranger!"

As a pair of travellers this was going to be interesting.

Upon arriving in Kenting we witnessed the amazing beach and found our way to the hostel directly next to it.

After checking in the girl at the front desk showed us to our room and sure enough this is what we got.

One of us was going to have a mystery bed mate.

Coincidentally, we managed to meet our Japanese and Korean friends from Tainan in the same hostel (hence why it took us a week to realise our Korean friend couldn't understand us) so we dropped our bags and ran out to the water together.

I had an amazing life moment whilst in the sea where it started raining very heavily. All of our clothes and items on the beach were drowned but we didn't care. It was one of the most memorable moments I've ever had.

After trying to dry off we made our way back to the hostel and noticed that someone's bag had been put on the empty "bed" next to Erica. "Do you know who's here?" we asked someone else we had met earlier in the room. " I think a guy called Kevin". 

We had a name.

I asked Erica for help on detailing parts of this trip and she explained the next part perfectly so I'll showcase it below:

"Later in the evening we were walking around the lit up night tourist

streets of Kenting. The vending stalls sold brightly shining tropical
fruits, ice creams, smoothies, and any kind of roasted animal part
imaginable. I really felt like I was in a foreign land, as obvious as
I know that sounds. On our stroll we ran into Casey, and some other
guests from our hostel. We met Craig, an interesting indie-type fellow
from Kansas, and a lot of really annoying American girls. One guy with
a scraggly beard and kind of half-closed eyes was standing off to the
side holding a can of beer. His gut was hanging out of his T-shirt a
little and hair was poking out from the neck of his T-Shirt. He
offered me a sweaty hand: “Hi I’m Kevin.”"

He snored incessantly.

One night whilst walking with Erica down a street across from Kenting beach, we came across a Taiwanese family having a BBQ. They seemed to be on vacation which is exactly the same thing they thought when they saw us.

The quite tipsy heads of the family were gesturing to us to join them in their fun times. "Why the hell not", we thought and sat down with them all.

After a few failed attempts at communication we managed to explain via one of the daughters (a high school student) in English that we lived in Japan.

"Japan!"- cried the father.

He held up his beer..."kanpai deshou!"

Floods of laughter. This became a catchphrase for the next hour.

After much drinking the men started chewing on betel nut and offered me some in the process.

We'd seen a bit of this during our time in Taipei. Men and women with glazed expressions on their faces and horrifying teeth.

If you type betel nut into Google and look at the images you'll understand.

For the second time in less than an hour I thought "Why the hell not" and started chewing it.

Here's what I felt:

-mild euphoria

-increased alertness

-increased heart rate

-self conscious about the many pairs of eyes staring at me (not an affect of betel nut...)

After 5 or so minutes the father of the family gestured that I should spit out the juice from the nut and showed an example - a perfect showing of a Western Tobacco spitting sketch, arcing it in such a way as it fell a far distance from the BBQ.

I leaned over and gobbed all over the floor (betel nut included) next to my shoes.

After about 10 more minutes of pleasantries and free beer (!) the father looked at us both and said in a tired fashion... "sayonara".

Awesome people!